America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocr...atic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true.... Yet now ... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The shows of the day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and... the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If it is no exaggeration to say that Deerfield is not so much a town as the ghost of a town, its dimness almost transparent, its q...uiet almost a cessation, it is essential to add that it is probably quite the most beautiful ghost of its kind, and with the deepest poetic and historic significance to be found in America.... It is, and will probably always remain, the perfect and beautiful statement of the tragic and creative moment when one civilization is destroyed by another. And the wonderful ghostliness of this mile-long 'Street' of grave and ancient houses, the strange air of unreality which hangs over it, arises precisely from the fact that the little town is really saying two things at once. It is saying, 'I dared to be beautiful, even in the shadow of the wilderness'; but it is also saying, 'And the wilderness haunts me, the ghosts of a slain race are in my doorways and clapboards, like a kind of death.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his n...ap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all.... I am not quite sure whether I... am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The question of "unreality" ... is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt w...ith this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreali...ty of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »